Dzheff Vandermeer

Jeff VanderMeer is an American writer, editor, and literary critic.

He was born in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, United States, and spent several years of his childhood in the Fiji Islands, where his parents worked in the Peace Corps. The family then returned to the United States, but before that spent another six months traveling through Asia, Africa, and Europe.

His father is Robert K. VanderMeer. He is a biochemist and is currently studying fire ants. Jeff’s mother is Penelope Miller. She is an artist and is currently working in Paris on her doctoral dissertation on 19th-century French sculpture. His sister Elizabeth lives in Scotland and is soon to receive a doctorate in ecology.

Jeff studied journalism for three years at the University of Florida in Gainesville, then switched to English literature with a minor in Latin American history. Surprisingly, VanderMeer still has not completed his education. In addition, in 1992 Jeff attended the Clarion East Workshop at the University of Michigan, where his classmates included Dale Bailey, Felicity Savage, Nathan Bollingrad, and Cory Doctorow. Incidentally, since 2007 he has himself been teaching at the Clarion East Workshop.

VanderMeer’s creative writing lessons were published in the American student magazine Merlin's Pen. In addition, Jeff took part in such writers’ conferences as the Florida Suncoast Writers' Festival and the Seven Hills Writers Conference. In addition to working on the editorial board of Fantastic Metropolis, he was one of the founders of the Council for Literature of the Fantastic at the University of Rhode Island. In 1998 he chaired the jury awarding the Philip K. Dick Award.

In 2003 Jeff VanderMeer married Anne Kennedy, an editor at the small independent press Buzzcity Press and the magazine Silver Web.

At present, VanderMeer and his wife live in Tallahassee, Florida. For about fifteen years, VanderMeer has headed The Ministry of Whimsy Press (for this work, he and Tom Winstead were nominated for the World Fantasy Award in 1998). In addition, Jeff works for the software company Infinity Software Development, where he writes the language component for online tests that emulate state tests for grades three through ten. VanderMeer is proud of his extensive library, especially his collection of first editions by Angela Carter,